


Every time the same

by FortuneSurfer



Category: Il buono il brutto il cattivo | The Good The Bad and The Ugly (1966)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:20:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26547409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FortuneSurfer/pseuds/FortuneSurfer
Summary: A story in which Tuco threatens a child, but it’s not that simple.
Relationships: "Blondie" | The Man with No Name/Tuco Ramirez
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	Every time the same

A drunk and dirty body is sleeping facedown at the table outside of a tavern in the middle of the day. Small, nimble hands of a street urchin are inspecting the pockets of his coat hanged over the back of the chair under him.

Seconds after he sees it, Tuco is all over the boy.

He grabs the unfortunate little thief by the hand as if he tried to steal from him personally, and the boy screams, but his voice attests more panic than pain. Tuco is looming over his unfortunate captive like a disheveled vulture over a desert mouse, and he ain’t shouting, no, he lowered his voice as he does when he’s so angry that his mind is focused on just one thing, like a poisoned Indian arrow. He shakes the boy and asks him questions.

Blondie watches the intense scene from across the street, frowning to himself.

Tuco lets go off the boy and starts to poke at his chest with his index finger, and that’s when he speaks loud enough for his passionate homily to reach Blondie’s years.

“…You think you become a _bandido_ and you have _dineros_ , you have _amore_? That what you think? You have _nothing!_ You have _no one!_ You’re in prison, and then you’re _dead!”_ The boy fells on the ground following a forceful poke. _“_ And no one will ever cry about you!”

Blondie’s intently watching eyes move back and forth between the heavily panting Tuco and the mortified urchin prostrated in the sand in front of him. Blondie already can tell that the child will take the life lesson to heart. Nobody knows better than him that Tuco can be as terrifying and ugly as he can be uplifting and charming when he wants to.

“…And if I see you stealing again, I’ll cut off all your fingers so that all you’ll be able to do for the rest of your life is beg in the streets. You remember that very well, you little runt!”

“Yes, señor-Captain-General-sir!”

“Then go home to your parents and kiss your mother!”

Tuco watches the boy run away in the bat of an eye, quick as a jack-rabbit. He stands there for another minute even when the boy must be long gone out of his sight. Then, abruptly, Tuco walks away, too. He doesn’t notice Blondie watching - chewing at a stubby cigar. Ruminating over Tuco’s character.

The drunk on the chair stirs to life and slowly raises his head. He looks around in confusion, then lowers him back onto the table without making a slightest sound.

By the dinner time, Tuco remains atypically quiet. He keeps touching a ring on his ring finger, and for the first time since their introduction Blondie starts to doubt that the ring has been stolen from somebody, like he assumed when Tuco told him that it had been a gift.

Tuco doesn’t even register that Blondie is giving him a plate with warm food, one of his favorite things in the world, until Blondie calls him by his name, questioningly. And maybe a little concerned.

Then the man realizes that he must have given his partner a peek into the disturbance he is feeling right now and wrinkles his nose. He unceremoniously grabs the offered plate, mutters something polite under his nose, and starts to wolf down everything like he normally would. Blondie watches him. He knows, just as he knows the stars will come out in a few hours, that his partner is barely tasting the food, too preoccupied with figuring out a way to make himself appear normal. To distract them both. It has happened before, and it will happen now. 

Surely, Blondie could introduce a little change and speak of what he has witnessed in town, ask Tuco about his past. He is actually deliberating it then, eating his own meal. But towards the end of the plate he decides that the talk won’t bring any relief now. Past is in the past. He doesn’t need to know any of it to know who Tuco is. He'll just embarrass the man. 

At some point, Blondie asks Tuco something trivial about what he did in the city today, though, to prompt him to relate them both some cute little story. Tuco seizes this opportunity like it’s a firm hand and he’s handing perilously from the edge of a gorge.

Blondie reclines a little and listens how Tuco met somebody he used to know in a pawn shop and collected a debt the guy owned him on the spot, and how then the pawn shop owner - “the dirty pig,” naturally - tried to cheat him when they negotiated the price for some small jewelry he just had been given to settle the debt and how the owner regretted their altercation when Tuco exposed him using his measuring instruments deceptively. The moral of the story being that nobody should mess with Tuco, that all is under control. It's the same every time.

The story may be completely true, a little embellished for the sake of a dramatic narrative, or a spontaneous creation of Tuco’s imagination pieced together from what has really happened to him on several separate occasions or even something he only heard happening to other people. It’s a good story regardless. Blondie enjoys Tuco’s funny and convincing enactment of it, like he always does.

He slowly offers Tuco a cigar in exchange for beguiling him with it.

“Well. You deserve a smoke after such a heated argument,” concludes Blondie, lazily smiling and gently mocking Tuco just a little with his tone. Somehow, he can never resist.

When Tuco reaches out to take the cigar, their fingers brush in a semblance of a light stroke. 

It has happened before, of course, when they were counting bills, passing cups or bottles or cartridges, in many fleeting meaningless instances, but this time the prolonged contact is trying, deliberate. Blondie knows that Tuco notices the difference in a gesture, the man notices everything that in any way pertains to him. Notices everything that pertains to Blondie, too. So, Tuco gives him a side glance, which isn’t shy, it’s steady and curious but betrays very little except for it. Tuco can be unreadable when he wants to, too. And he sure as hell ain’t ugly now.

There is a familiar feeling, like embers glowing tenderly in the pit of Blondie’s stomach, an uncertainty in the air. 

He doesn’t turn his head and return the glance - as has happened before, too, but is bound to change someday - even though in that moment Blondie is thinking hard about the words, harsh like a jute rope, and equally true for both of them. _You have no one_.

Or maybe for neither.

In any case, Blondie tells Tuco that the cigar is the last one he's got as he forgot to buy new ones in town. Tuco doesn't say anything, but Blondie doesn’t think that he believes the lie. They keep sharing the cigar until there is scarcely anything left from the stick for them to smoke.

The night is alive with the warm noises from their horses, with wind and a coyote howling somewhere not far away. And for some reason in that moment Blondie can imagine him and Tuco sharing a quiet, intimate smoke like this many years in the future. The idea feels comfortable to him like a well-worn coat, like the weight of a revolver on his hip. And under the expanse of a night desert sky it seems as possible as anything else.


End file.
